Splendor of the True

James S. Cutsinger

Description

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998), the leading figure in the perennialist school of comparative religious thought, remains one of the most provocative voices on religion. Bridging the divide between seeker and scholar, Schuon challenges the prevailing notion that religion should be studied with agnostic neutrality. He speaks to those who are looking for greater interfaith understanding and a deeper penetration to the esoteric heart of specific traditions, while turning the tables on an increasingly noisy chorus of skeptics.

In Splendor of the True, James S. Cutsinger selects essential writings that reflect the full range of Schuon's thought on religion and tradition, metaphysics and epistemology, human nature and destiny, sacred art and symbolism, and spirituality and contemplative method. In addition to Schuon's essays, the book includes a number of poems, artworks, and previously unpublished materials drawn from his letters, personal memoirs, and private texts for disciples. An introductory chapter provides a careful examination of Schuon as perennial philosopher, Sufi shaykh, and teacher of gnosis.
Illustrations
Poems
Foreword by Huston Smith
Introduction by James S. Cutsinger
Preface

Part I. Religion and Tradition

1. The Sense of the Absolute in Religions
2. Two Esotericisms
3. Concerning Naiveté
4. The Mystery of the Hypostatic Face

Part II. The Perennial Philosophy

5. Summary of Integral Metaphysics
6. Consequences Flowing from the Mystery of Subjectivity
7. Tracing the Notion of Philosophy
8. Understanding and Believing

Part III. Human Nature and Destiny

9. Man in the Universe
10. The Message of the Human Body
11. Man and Certainty
12. Universal Eschatology

Part IV. Sacred Art and Symbolism

13. The Question of Forms in Art
14. The Liberating Passage
15. An Elementary Criteriology of Celestial Apparitions
16. The Symbolism of the Hourglass

Part V. Spirituality

17. Modes of Spiritual Realization
18. The Anonymity of the Virtues
19. The Nature and Function of the Spiritual Master
20. The Stations of Wisdom

Conclusion: Religio Perennis

Appendix: Selections from Letters, Spiritual Texts, and Memoirs
Translator's Notes
Glossary
Sources
Bibliography of Works by Frithjof Schuon
Index

Sujets

• Mysticism
• Gnosticism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 06 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438446127
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions

David Appelbaum, editor

S PLENDOR OF THE T RUE
A F RITHJOF S CHUON R EADER
Selected, translated, and with an introduction by
James S. Cutsinger
Foreword by
Huston Smith

Cover image: Photograph of Frithjof Schuon (c. 1958). Courtesy of World Wisdom, Inc.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Meehan Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schuon, Frithjof, 1907–1998.
[Selections. English. 2013]
Splendor of the true : a Frithjof Schuon reader / selected, translated, and introduced by James S. Cutsinger ; foreword by Huston Smith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4611-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-4610-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Religion—Philosophy. 2. Religions. 3. Philosophy. I. Cutsinger, James S., 1953– II. Title.
BL51.S463213 2013
210—dc23
2012017394
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Socrates
Do you think Truth is akin to moderation and proportion or to disproportion?
Glaucon
To proportion.
Socrates
Then in addition to our other requirements we must look for a mind endowed with moderation and grace and drawn by nature to see the Truth in all things.
Plato, Republic , 486d
ILLUSTRATIONS
Frithjof Schuon in 1965
Artwork by Frithjof Schuon
Sketches from the Far East to the Far West
Color Plates
     following page

A. Maghreb
B. Celestial Virgin and Child
C. The Christ
D. The River
E. Sioux Chief
F. The Descent of the Sacred Pipe
G. The Thunderstorm
H. The Terrace
The Book of Keys, No. 74, The Five Divine Presences
Original French Manuscript
English Translation
POEMS
The Gift
Sanctuaries
Gnosis
Creation's Play
Winter
Sophia Perennis
“I-ness”
Māyā
Bodhi
Samsāra
Lalla
Archetypal Man
Life
Dawn
Woman
Flowers
The Fan
Here and Now
Veritas
Ad Astra
A Song
The One
FOREWORD
Anyone who wants to escape from the culture of despair that seems to have overtaken America in recent years can do no better than to read this book. In his famous 1978 Commencement Address at Harvard University, Alexander Solzhenitsyn attributed this despair to the West's “spiritual exhaustion.” More and more people are recognizing that this exhaustion is not serving our society well—to say the least!—but its cultural barons give us no suggestions as to how to extricate ourselves from it. This book does just that, and it does so by weaving a tapestry from judiciously selected passages in the vast corpus of Frithjof Schuon, whom I join the editor in regarding as the spiritual prophet of our time par excellence . The easiest way I can explain my side of that estimate is to address it personally.
Early in life I realized that what I most wanted was to understand the ultimate nature of things—God, Truth, Reality, the Big Picture, the Infinite, whatever we choose to call it. Next came the realization that, since there is no commensurability between the Real and the unreal, I could accomplish my objective only by taking Revelation seriously, since this is the way in which the Real makes itself known to human beings. So I turned my attention in that direction—to Revelation as it appears in all the great religions, for they were all set in motion by revealed Truth. But this brought me to an impasse: the problem of the one and the many, as philosophers call it. Truth, capitalized, has to be single—“Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One”—whereas the world's wisdom traditions (as I have come to think of them) are incontestably plural. They are alike in many respects, but they also contradict one another on important points. How could I uncompromisingly affirm the singularity of the Real and at the same time believe that all the authentic religions have stemmed from its single Source? To put the matter starkly, how could I believe in “Revelations”—using the capitalization to validate their ultimacy—without dropping the word's plural ending? The standard way to finesse that problem is to change the capital “R” to lower case when speaking in the plural, but the deeper I moved into the profundities of the wisdom traditions, the more singular their presiding Truth appeared.
I am not sure that if I had been left to my own devices I could have ever solved this problem, which would have meant knocking my head against its wall for my entire career. Frithjof Schuon rescued me from that fate. I will not steal the thunder of the book in hand by saying how he cut the Gordian knot and squared the circle, to mix my metaphors. It is enough if I say that when his position came into focus for me—it took some time, for though passages in his writing are so inspiringly beautiful as to make the reader interrupt his reading and pause to pray, others are as difficult as any passage in philosophy one can name—I realized that I was in the presence of a metaphysical genius, a man who was doing exactly what I was trying to do: honor equally religion's breadth, embracing its manifold historical expressions, and its vertical height, anchored in the One Living God. And he was doing it with a flair that I could admire only from a very great distance. I apprenticed myself to Schuon and will keep on doing so for the rest of my life.
It remains for me to say in closing that in the translator and editor of this collection, Schuon has found the perfect amanuensis. No one alive understands his outlook better than James Cutsinger, and in this labor of love he does a remarkable job of making Schuon accessible to a much wider audience than this extraordinary writer has thus far enjoyed.
—Huston Smith
INTRODUCTION
Few religious writers of recent times have had as polarizing an effect on those acquainted with their work as Frithjof Schuon.
A first group of readers have competed to see who can praise him in the grandest terms. One of them tells us that Schuon's books offer “completely new perspectives in every aspect of religious thought,” 1 while another asserts that “ à propos religion, equally in depth and breadth,” he was “the paragon of our time.” 2 Yet a third prolific and highly respected scholar has elevated his own superlatives to the level of the superhuman, comparing Schuon to “the cosmic Intellect itself.” 3 It is important to note that these are not the words of marginal thinkers or cultish sycophants. On the contrary they represent the considered judgment of several of the academy's most prestigious and influential names. Schuon—who was at once a philosopher, an authority on the world's religions, a spiritual guide, and a gifted poet and painter—seemed to many of his most learned readers not just a man but a providential phenomenon, a many-sided genius with a God-given spiritual role for our age.
At the same time, however, his work has been severely criticized—when not simply ignored—by a second and admittedly much larger group, and this includes academics who might have otherwise been expected to benefit most from his insights: philosophers of religion, authorities on mysticism and spirituality, and comparative religionists. In fact scholarly dismissals began many years ago when a prominent reviewer of one of this author's first books complained that “Schuon glories in his contempt for human reason” and that his writings are little more than “a disconnected series of private thoughts”; 4 another critic has charged Schuon with a “subtle arrogance which is hardly becoming in those who desire religious unity,” 5 while a third objects that “the very manner in which Schuon's thesis is developed suggests that the theoretical is the basis for what is…. The course of philosophy (and theology, too) over the past two centuries is precisely one of questioning such an approach.” 6 For a number of reasons, the opinions of those in this second group have tended to carry the day. As a result Schuon's books are seldom read in college or university classrooms, and his name therefore remains comparatively unknown among students of religion and philosophy, as well as among those in the wider public whose choice of reading is influenced by what the pundits say. 7
My aim in compiling this anthology has been to redress this imbalance by offering its readers a glimpse of the full scope of Schuon's philosophy in order that they might be able to judge for themselves what to make of this provocative, and obviously controversial, writer. It should be understood from the outset that I am by no means an indifferent observer. Having studied and written about Schuon for the past quarter century, I have long been convinced that he is an author whose work deserves a much larger audience and much fairer hearing, and this book has been quite deliberately designed to persuade others to think the same. Colleagues in the field who are accustomed to maintaining neutrality may fault me for